


What Could Have Been

by SonneillonV



Series: Runs In The Family [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Asthma, Disability, Gen, Kree Invasion, Next Generation, Physical Disability, Skrull(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-01-09 17:16:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonneillonV/pseuds/SonneillonV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers' son is born with his original health maladies and none of the benefits of the Super Soldier Serum.  That doesn't mean enemies of Earth's Avengers leave him alone.  Sequel to 'Runs In The Family'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Aliens Come In All The Colors Of The Rainbow

Seth is seventeen and stuck in a spaceship that’s carrying him away from his homeworld.  He should be hopelessly anxious but the cargo bay into which he was unceremoniously shoved has a window and he’s too busy staring out of it to feel much fear.

 

That, and it isn’t exactly the first time he’d been kidnapped.

 

It’s the first time he’s been off-planet though and the view is arresting.  He’s seen hundreds of NASA images in his life but there’s something about seeing it with his own eyes, with the clouds moving and the color of the waters shifting, that makes his heart feel like it might burst.  For the first time in his life he really _loves_ his planet, not because he disliked it before, but because he’d never been parted from it.  It’s like suddenly becoming aware of how much he loves his hands or his eyes.

 

Kay doesn’t bother to look, hunched in the corner of the cargo bay with his dark head down and his elbows resting on his knees.  He looks resigned, even defeated, and Seth thinks he understands that – escaping from a super-villain’s secret headquarters is one thing.  In those cases, Seth can and has just caught the subway home.  This is different – the vacuum of space is unforgiving and neither of them knows how to pilot an alien spacecraft.  Thanks to Tony’s teaching Seth thinks that, given time, he might be able to figure it out but if they have to steal a ship to escape he probably won’t have that kind of time.

 

When the exquisite blue-green orb disappears, Seth uses his hands to hitch himself over to where Kay is sitting.  He’s wearing his good braces, the ones he designed himself, that let him walk, run, jump, and even fly now that he’s added a set of repulsors and stabilizers to the boot pieces, but Kay doesn’t know that and Seth thinks maybe Kay would feel better about their situation if he knew how capable Seth really was at the moment.

 

They’ve been friends for almost a year now.  There are a lot of secrets between them that have kept their emotional engagement at a polite distance.  But when the Red Skull incident wasn’t sufficient to scare Kay away, Seth decided he was willing to suffer those secrets in exchange for having a friend who was willing to risk being targeted by super-villains to hang out with him.  He never imagined the pleasure of his company would offset that risk; he never for an instant blamed those who decided to prioritize their health over their friendship with him.  The fact that Kay’s priorities seem to shake out the other way means that Kay either has an ulterior motive or he’s a little crazy.  Over their time together, Seth has seen evidence for both.

 

So far, Kay has behaved himself.  Seth is willing to give him the time he needs to either make his move or tell the truth.  And in a situation like this, Seth is fairly certain Kay is in just as much danger as he is – Kay may be a villain or the child of villains, or a mutant, or some other kind of super-powered creature, but he’s still only human and they are very, very outgunned.  And somehow, though of course the possibility exists, Seth doesn’t think Kay has anything to do with this latest kidnapping.

 

He elbows the other boy gently.  “Hey.  It’s gonna be okay.”

 

“You would say that.”  Kay sounds dryly amused and Seth is encouraged because if they are going to escape – and Seth fully plans to escape – he needs Kay to be clear-headed.

 

“I know,” he admits, “But it’s true.  It’s going to be okay.  We’re going to get out of here and I’m going to need your help, so stay with me, okay?”

 

Kay raises his dark head and offers Seth a wry smile.  “I’m with you,” he says, simple truth.  “Doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it.”

 

“Look forward to going home,” Seth suggests.  “Because this isn’t like last time.  I’m going to get you home.”  It’s a solemn vow on his part, and for a long time Kay just stares into those clear blue eyes and tries to remember a time when he didn’t trust Seth Rogers with his life.

 

“Seth….”  He sounds hesitant, but Seth isn’t the sort of person who talks over others.  He waits patiently for Kay to continue, and Kay sighs, letting his head fall back against the cold, gleaming metal wall.  “This isn’t like the last time.  I don’t know how to tell you….”

 

“Take a deep breath and spit it out?” Seth suggests gently.

 

Kay laughs.  “It’s not that easy.”

 

Seth nods because he understands, he _does_ , and moves so he’s sitting against the same wall shoulder-to-shoulder with Kay.  “Does it help if I tell you I know you’re a shapeshifter?”

 

Kay blinks and smiles.  He has the clearest green eyes… Seth has only seen that color on one other person, but he’s pretty sure Kay’s not Asgardian.  “You never said anything.”

 

“I didn’t see the point.”  Seth shrugs and smooths the knee of his jeans so it doesn’t wrinkle over his braces.  “Figured you’d tell me when you were good and ready.  Are you a mutant?”  He’s serious and solemn, but still gentle, always.  “Because I know there’s been a lot of conflict but I want you to know, I would never tell your secret.  I’d never put you at risk.”  His earnestness is utterly sincere and Kay smiles painfully.

 

“No, it’s worse than you think.  This…”  Kay gestures at the bay they’re in.  “I know what this is.  This is the Kree and I doubt they have any particular hard-on for hurting you, but once they take a closer look at me….”

 

Seth frowns.  “The ‘Kree’?  What…?”

 

Before he can ask Kay to clarify, there is a mechanized thud and a whine and the heavy bay doors begin to open.  Not the outer ones, thank god, but Seth isn’t sure he’s looking forward to meeting their captors.  The individuals who step inside are huge – the tallest is probably about eight feet.  Their armor is green and gleaming silver, with domed helmets and thick, chunky pieces protecting their chests and forearms.  Seth wonders if it’s meant to make them stronger and quicker, not that they seem to need it.  They train their weapons on the two boys, neither of whom has gotten up or made a threatening move.

 

Then a Kree woman, her skin faintly pink, steps forward.  “Seth Rogers,” she says, and her voice is musical.  “You are a hostage of the Kree Empire.  Do not resist, and you will not be harmed.”

 

“Okay.”  Seth surprises himself with how calm he sounds, how measured, as if he’s done this a million times before.  “Why am I a hostage, if I may ask?”

 

She tilts her head.  “You are to be used as leverage to force a parlay with Earth’s Avengers and to ensure their compliance with the Empire’s demands.  So long as they cooperate, you have nothing to fear.”

 

“I’m unfamiliar with the Empire,” Seth confesses.  “But since this is our first meeting, if it’s acceptable to you, I’d like to get to know you better.  Have you had contact with Earth or with humans in the past?”

 

She measures him for a long moment, assessing his calm, the even honesty in his voice, the awkward way he’s sitting on the cold metal floor because of his braces.  Then she turns to Kay and looks him over, and her scrutiny makes Seth glance at his companion.

 

Kay’s normally dark skin has gone two shades lighter and a droplet of sweat rolls down his temple.  His hands are white-knuckled around the folds of his jeans.  Kay is _scared._  But his expression is as bored and aloof as it ever is, carefully schooled into impassivity.  He’s scared but he’s trying to be brave and Seth slips his hand behind the small of Kay’s back, finds the skin between the waist of his jeans and the looser fabric of his shirt, and presses his hand there.  The muscle under his fingers is taut, rock-hard with tension, and Seth rubs his thumb over the bumps of his spine.   _I’m here._

 

The leader says something in a language Seth doesn’t understand, and that partially answers his question – if they’re not using a translator, that means they know English, which means they have to have had enough contact to become fluent in at least one major Terran language.  One of her cohorts pulls a device from his pocket – it’s similar enough to a tricorder that Seth immediately comprehends its purpose.  He scans them both, then exchanges a look with his leader and snarls, “Ect tuka _Skrull_.”

 

Seth doesn’t know what that means.  He only knows that the woman snaps a command and the soldiers are moving with cruel strength and speed, yanking Kay to his feet and holding him with his arms twisted behind him and the barrels of three futuristic rifles aimed at his head.  Kay seethes but he doesn’t resist.  He couldn’t win and he knows it.

 

Seth rolls over to his knees and lurches to his feet.  “Wait!  Please,” he amends, holding his hands out, approaching the woman with as much humility as he can manage in his urgency.  “Please,” he says again, “don’t hurt him.  He’s my friend.”

 

Her eyebrows rise, and for a moment she looks like she almost pities him.  “This deceiver is no friend of yours, child.  He’s the reason we’re here.  He’s a member of the advance force, sent to infiltrate your race and sabotage your defenses when the time is right.   _Diukailek_!” she snaps, and three of her soldiers leave the cargo bay, two dragging Kay between them.

 

“Seth,” he says sharply as they haul him along, “Don’t worry about me.  Get yourself out…!”

 

Seth’s instinct is to chase, so he does.  The remaining two soldiers catch him and Seth, for just one moment, breaks character… the system he spent his life inventing, the Mechanized Mobility Assistance that he built into his braces, thrums softly against his thighs as it kicks into gear and he almost gently re-directs the Kree soldiers into each other, side-stepping and slipping around the back of one as he trips into his compatriot’s arms.  It’s nothing impressive, just a little Aikido.  He strains to lift his heels and the flex-bars built into the calves of his bracers descend, tipping him forward, allowing him to run.  The bracers strain against his thighs and he makes a mental note to find a way to quicken their response time because he doesn’t lunge at one of Kay’s captors so much as… fall at him.  At relatively high speed.  His weight jars the soldier, at least, because he staggers sideways and then Seth is guiding one hand in a gentle arc and digging his thumb into the other wrist, numbing the thumb so Kay can break the hold before using his own lack of balance to yank the soldier around and toss him into his companions, who had just disentangled themselves and started to close in.

 

The other soldier pulls his gun and Kay makes a sharp noise of protest.  His free hand grips the barrel, driving it up, and he almost casually kicks the soldier’s knee from the side hard enough to tear tendon and smash cartilage.  The soldier goes down with a muffled scream and Kay has a gun.

 

Of course, the remaining Kree have five guns.

 

“Whoa, whoa, WHOA!”  Seth stumbles into position between Kay, who’s holding the rifle like he knows how to use it, and the Kree.  He’s surrounded by the whine of charging energy weapons and he holds out his empty hands.  They turn together by silent agreement, putting Kay’s back against the wall, preventing one of the Kree from flanking them.  “Let’s all just… calm down,” Seth suggests, but the Kree respond by taking up the slack in their triggers and Kay grabs Seth’s shirt, trying to yank him out of the way.

 

“Seth,” he’s muttering, “quit it.  Seth, get out of the way.  SETH.”

 

“Just calm down,” Seth pleads, and Kay is breathing hard behind him, his clothing rasping softly against the textured metal wall.

 

“You don’t understand,” he mutters.  “Seth, stop it.  You have to let me go.”

 

“Are they going to kill you?”

 

“Yes.  But it doesn’t matter.  They won’t kill you if you don’t force them to.”

 

“They need me,” Seth says, eying the Kree woman over the heads of her cohorts.  “Right?  You need me.  And it’s easier if I cooperate, right?  Fewer headaches for everybody.  Well, I’m willing to cooperate, but this is my condition: Kay stays with me, alive and unharmed.”

 

“You humans have many admirable traits.”  Her voice is stern, and Seth thinks maybe she’s trying to be understanding but not quite getting it right.  “Loyalty among them.  But this creature does not deserve your loyalty.  He is your enemy, and an enemy of your entire species.  Take him,” she instructs her soldiers, who move in even as Seth shoulders Kay’s gun barrel up.  It discharges into the ceiling and then the Kree are on them, wrestling them down.

 

“Kay,” Seth gasps.  “I’m going to fight for you.  Okay?  HANG ON.  I’ll come and get you!”

 

“Seth…!”  They take the gun away, twisting it out of his hand, and pile on him, driving the air out of him.  For one moment, their eyes lock.  “This is not your fault,” Kay growls through gritted teeth.  “You understand?  This.  Is _not._  Your fault.”

 

Seth tries to get his legs under him but he’s also being piled on and the Kree aren’t giving him any extra room this time.  Someone clubs him over the back of the head and his vision blacks for a moment.  He doesn’t lose consciousness, not really, just sways and suddenly everything is appearing in copies of two or three.  By the time he shakes it off Kay is gone and half the Kree soldiers with him.

 

“Your harness,” the leader says when he stops struggling.  “Remove it.”

 

Seth freezes.  “What?”

 

She is patient, but sharp.  “Your harness.  I have decided to consider it a weapon.  You must surrender it.”

 

“I can’t walk without it,” Seth protests, but even as he speaks, he knows it’s futile.  Her smile confirms it.

 

“Yes.  And if you can’t walk, I anticipate you’ll be much less trouble.  I will give you this one chance to remove it without damage.  It will be stored and returned to you upon your release.  However, if you do not comply, we will be forced to cut it off you.  I doubt it will survive the process.”  She eyes him smugly.  “Such technology must come at a dear cost on your backwards little planet.”

 

The urge to break her nose is overwhelming.  Seth stifles it and takes half a second to consider his options.  In the end, he sincerely doubts he will ever get his braces back.  He’ll have to rebuild them whatever he does.  He sheds his jeans without shame because he has to wear friction-reducing leggings under his braces anyway.  The dial at his waist, when twisted, releases the clamps and allows the pieces to detach.  He has to step out of the boots, and manages to balance on one foot, but for the second one, without any support, he falls.

 

There is no sympathy.  They take the braces and go through the pockets of his jeans before giving them back, and Seth has to lie on the ground to pull them on.  He can feel their disdain and he tries to let it roll off – it isn’t like people haven’t looked at him that way all his life.  His mini tool pack is gone now, and so is his pen knife, and….

 

“My inhalers,” he says, pushing himself up into sitting position.  “I have to have those.”

 

She arches an eyebrow and looks at the small collection of things salvaged from his pockets.  “What is that?”

 

Seth doesn’t feel like explaining asthma to a goddamn alien.  “I’m sick in my lungs,” he says simply.  “It’s my medicine.  It’s a tube that turns it into aerosol form so I can inhale it.  That,” he says, and points to one of the inhalers resting like a fragile egg in Kree hands.

 

She doesn’t roll her eyes – maybe they don’t have that gesture in the Empire – but she does look like she wants to.  “You should have been killed at birth,” she tells him as one of her cohorts uses his tricorder device on the inhaler.  He speaks to her in their language and apparently tells her the tube does, in fact, contain medicine, because she makes an annoyed gesture and the two inhalers are dropped into his lap.  Seth wraps his hands around them, afraid to let them go.

 

“You’re the one who decided to kidnap a cripple,” Seth returns levelly.  “If you didn’t want the hassle you should have picked a healthier hostage.  But I guess now you’re stuck with me.”  He has the satisfaction of seeing anger flare in her eyes at his words and then the Kree are hauling him up.  He pushes his feet against the floor but without added support they won’t hold him.

 

In the midst of other turmoil, a thread of ironic humor comes to him.   _I’m missing PT for this._ He smiles and uses that thought as a shield against the anxiety that wants to take him over and close his lungs.  Now is not the time to have an attack.  He has other things to focus on, like getting out of whatever cell they decide to throw him in and then getting Kay back before they can do him any permanent harm.  Assuming they haven’t already.

 

The Kree soldiers carry him through arched hallways, past consoles glowing in beautiful, vibrant colors.  Their technology is not only extremely advanced, the aesthetics are so striking Seth feels like he found his way to some futuristic version of Lothlórien.  More Kree pass, their skin shades of pink and blue and sometimes more human colors, tall and beautiful, each an exceptional specimen to his untrained eye.  But their beauty is tainted by the cruelty in their mouths and the coldness in their eyes.  There’s no help to be found here and Seth knows it.

 

They put him in what looks like a spare set of crew quarters.  It’s small but nice enough, with a pair of bunked beds set into the wall and a floral arrangement near the door.  They are courteous enough to set him down on the bed instead of throwing him to the floor.

 

“If you require food or water, say so,” she tells him.

 

Seth looks her in the eye.  “I require Kay.”

 

Her eyebrows lift and her smile returns.  “You’ll see him soon enough.  You humans are so naïve,” she comments.  “You can’t see what’s best for you.  The Kree are older and wiser and more evolved than your species.  You have no idea what the rest of the universe has planned for your planet,” she tells him with deep satisfaction, “but if you will accept the direction of your betters we will guide you through the coming war and all will be well.”

 

“What’s your name?” Seth inquires, and seems to startle her, because she draws up tall and inclines her chin.

 

“I am Anahl.”  It’s not such an odd name.  Seth won’t even have trouble pronouncing it.

 

“Okay, Anahl.  Listen up,” he says, and hears the coil of darkness in his voice that would never have tainted his father’s.  “Sooner or later you’re going to need something from me.  And I’m going to be inclined to sabotage your efforts at every possible turn unless you relinquish Kay.  Bring him to me and let him be or you and I are going to have a problem.  Do we understand each other?”

 

Anahl’s smile is tight, and she casts a side-long glance at what looks like a plate of clear glass or plastic mounted on the wall.  Seth ascertains it’s a viewscreen of some sort.  “I have other things to attend to,” she says, “but I’ll leave you with some entertainment.  We’ll speak again later.  Perhaps you’ll take the opportunity to change your mind.”  She snaps instructions at her minions, who withdraw and close the door.  The light on the door panel turns to blue from white.  Seth assumes this means the door is locked, but he’s unwilling to take it for granted.

 

Getting to the door is a bit of labor but Seth thinks the Kree have overestimated his handicap.  He’s spent his entire life figuring out ways to get around and just because he’s invented his braces doesn’t mean he’s forgotten how to live without them.  He slides down to the floor and crawls to the small chair and table tucked into the corner, then drags the chair over by the door.  The floor is ever-so-slightly cushy and the chair makes no noise.  Once it’s positioned he climbs up into it and drags himself to eye-level with the door controls.

 

They didn’t search him thoroughly enough.  This isn’t the first time he’s been kidnapped.

 

Kree technology is nothing like Hydra’s or A.I.M.’s, he discovers once he gets inside with his spare tool kit, but it’s not inscrutable.  Once he gets the door panel off he reveals something that might resemble a circuit-board a few hundred years in the future.  He can’t tell if it requires a fingerprint or some unique Kree quality to get it to open up, but he figures he has time to mess with the lock.

 

He’s got his tools wedged into the cavity and is examining the structure of the grid when the view screen flickers to life.  It’s the sound that gets through to him, the soft _whump whump whump_ of some kind of huge fan, and then he hears Kay’s voice.

 

He turns, not sure what he’s expecting to see.  There’s Kay, dressed in his jeans and nothing else – they took his shoes, his layered shirts, his jacket.  His skin is dark green and a little bit scaly but it has to be Kay, because why would they show him anyone else?

 

For a moment, Seth forgets his escape plan.  He can’t look away from what’s on the screen.

 

X-X-X

 

Keirx is having a really bad day, maybe even the worst day of his life.  Before this, the worst day of his life was Loki’s failed invasion of Earth, the day he was stranded on an alien planet without orders or any way to communicate with his superiors, left to fend for himself in hostile territory.  He managed to survive.  Hell, he managed to thrive.  He immersed himself in human culture until he could pass as one of them and as the years went by he figured out how to give himself orders, how to seek the best interests of his race without feedback, based on his own common sense.  He picked a target, he pursued that target, he collected intelligence other members of his division would have killed for.  He’d been ready to hand the Queen The Avengers, and by extension Planet Earth, on a silver platter.

 

Then the Kree showed up and it all went to hell.

 

_And they’re so fucking ugly,_ he thinks to himself as the inquisitor arranges her equipment.  She’s letting him watch, a little psychological warfare before they get right down to it, and Keirx wants to laugh at how scripted the whole thing is.  He’s been among humans for almost two decades now, hiding.  He’s gotten used to how they look, stopped thinking of them as ugly.  But the Kree, even though they’re not so different from humans, are still hideous to him.  Maybe it’s because he hates them so much.

 

The look of the tools his inquisitor is laying out makes it clear the feeling is mutual.

 

The door spirals open and his captor walks in.  She’s tall and rose-skinned and humans would probably think she was stunning.  Keirx forces himself to look bored.  She covers the distance in long, confident strides and stands in front of him, grimacing.  She thinks he’s hideous too, an ugly little green-skinned goblin.  He’s familiar with the common epithets shared between their races.

 

His hair’s grown long in his time on earth.  He blows it out of his face and offers her the knife’s-edge smile he learned.

 

“Name,” she says to him.  “Rank.”

 

“Go fuck yourself.  With a cactus.”  He uses English and he’s not sure why – he speaks Galactic Trade Standard just fine.  He even knows a few phrases in Kree, most of them insults, and he might use them later, but for some reason even he can’t really discern he’s clinging to his human identity right now even though they’ve forced him into his natural form.

 

His captor looks unimpressed.  She lifts her eyebrows in that damnably superior way that all Kree seem to master instinctively from birth.  “Members of the Skrull military are instructed to give their name and rank to their captors upon request,” she reminds him, as if he doesn’t know his own damn procedures.  “Without this information we cannot inform your superiors that you have been captured.”

 

“Damn, that’s inconvenient,” Keirx drawls.  “Have fun with that.”

 

She looks briefly taken aback, then contemplates him closely.  “You have one chance to give us the information we seek.  If you choose not to comply, we will be forced to use less civilized methods.  Name.  Rank.”

 

He switches to Kree, which he can tell surprises her.  He enumerates a few perverse mating acts she could perform with the large, smelly, bison-like animals native to Tamax IV.

 

She fractures his jaw.

 

When she leaves, his inquisitor moves into position.  She has a nerve inducer – starting with the basics, which means she’s going to be thorough.

 

It’s okay.  Keirx already knows he’s not coming out of this alive.

 

He decides he’s not going to scream.  It’s going to be like a game, something to focus on so his lips don’t start flapping.  He’ll pretend his vocal chords aren’t there and when they ask him questions, he won’t make a sound.

 

As she presses the inducer against his stomach and he exhales in an agonized hiss, he realizes: he’s not sure who he’s protecting anymore.

 

X-X-X

 

Seth sits alone in his room and thinks about Kay speaking Kree.

 

He thinks about the green scales and the bat-like, pointed ears.

 

He thinks about how alien!Kay doesn’t really look that different from human!Kay… how his shape, the shape he took to become part of Seth’s life, is as close as a human could get to his true face.

 

For some reason, Seth had always sort of thought that Kay was trying to emulate someone else.  Maybe they were just… coincidentally similar.  It hadn’t escaped him that the one person he’d had a persistent crush on his entire life was reflected in Kay’s sharp, sly smile.  It was too convenient, too coincidental.  He’s kept Kay at arm’s length because of it.

 

He knows he’s supposed to watch, that this broadcast is meant for him – to change his mind, to shake him, to rattle his loyalties – but from the first time Kay refuses to scream Seth gives up on the view-screen and attacks the door controls like a genius possessed.  This isn’t a prison cell as far as he can tell.  It has vulnerabilities.  There’s a way to override the door and if he can override the door he can probably take out any guards standing outside and if he can take out the guards then he can crawl his crippled ass down to whatever hellhole they’ve stashed Kay in and Kay, who’s demonstrated superhuman strength on a couple of occasions when he thought Seth wasn’t watching, can fucking CARRY him out.

 

Yeah.  Sure.  That will totally work.

 

He tries to find the level of focus that eats up the hours in Tony’s workshop, but behind him on the view screen Kay is being tortured and for some reason, he doesn’t have it in him to ignore that.  So while most of his attention is wrapped around the alien future-tech keeping him locked up, a part of him catalogues every hiss, every gasp, every rattle of Kay’s restraints.

 

Kay would probably be proud of the dark impulse to pay every injury back with interest.


	2. In Which Seth Vandalizes His Bedsheets

Hours pass during which a plan comes to Seth. It’s graceless but also uncomplicated and relies on the Kree’s vast underestimation of him, which means that if he fails this time he's unlikely to get another chance. They won’t be so lax twice. Mercifully the view-screen turned off after only a few more minutes of Kay’s torture. Seth feels, on one hand, that he is obliged to stand witness to the Kree’s crimes and to his friend’s suffering. But on the other hand, he has an escape plan to organize and watching Kay bravely refuse to scream, or make any noise whatsoever, makes him too nauseous to concentrate.

 

His savaging of the inner door control panel has convinced him that the Kree aren’t watching him, or else surely they would have come and taken his spare toolkit away. It also confirms his estimation that the room in which he is being kept is meant to be residential, and not any form of brig – a brig would have cameras. This leaves him free to plot and assess his resources, and he has found the oversight that will make all the difference.

 

The Kree have given him a chair. Just a regular chair, graceful in form and function, made all in one piece. It seems to be something between metal and plastic, and experimentation teaches him he can neither bend it nor break pieces off it, which both narrows his options and makes it perfect for his purposes. It's lightweight and not bolted to the floor like the table. They probably assume that, at worst, he might try to throw it at a soldier who would bat it aside as casually as he would swat a gnat. But Seth grew up at the knee of Tony Stark and he doesn’t think in such straightforward terms.

 

He also has a bed. The bed, of course, is bolted down but it holds a firm mattress covered in some kind of heavy, stiff fabric that keeps its surface perfectly level with the metal edges. There's a lightweight blanket that kind of/sort of resembles fleece? It's thin, anyway, and deceptively warm. Seth finds the materials frustrating because every single one is unfamiliar to him. He doesn’t know their make-up or their chemical formula. The metals are strange alloys whose behavior he can’t predict and the textiles are so obviously alien that even the closest earth approximations don’t give him a reliable reference.

 

It's childish, but just for the moment, just for this situation, Seth gives himself permission to hate aliens.

 

Still, he has a chair and he has two kinds of fabric. He also has his spare tool kit. It's something.

 

His first experiment is to drag the blanket down to the floor and use the heels of his hands to grind it back and forth across first the metal panels, then the neat, dense bit of carpeting. It slides smoothly across both surfaces without building static. Perfect. Next he uses his tiny flathead screwdriver to pry, needle, stab, and rip up the edge of the mattress cover. He works in as close to perfect silence as he can manage, wary of being caught. Once he gets the corner up, it's easier to wrench the rest of the fabric free of its hidden stitching. It flops heavily, like canvas, and when he curls it over in his hands it rolls up into a stiff, minimally flexible bundle.

 

Perfect. _Perfect._

 

He's just working the tip of the flathead against the blanket, struggling to force the metal through and create a starting tear, when the sound of voices outside warns him he's no longer alone.  With the speed born of long practice he secrets the screwdriver away and flops back on the bed as if he’s been up to nothing more seditious than staring at the ceiling. He already returned the chair and the mattress cover to their original orientations – thank god he isn’t like Tony, and actually cleans up after himself while he works.

 

The door hisses open and Anahl steps inside, cautiously at first, as if she expects an ill-planned ambush. Seth notes it and winces. Ah well… he can ambush her later. As long as they haven’t killed Kay yet, he has plenty of time to live up to her expectations.

 

Her pretty, alien eyes fix on his. Her stare is cold, but she isn’t Loki, with his eyes like the whip-crack of glacier winds, and Seth doesn’t flinch. Instead he sculpts his expression to be politely solicitous, and after a long appraising moment her mouth twists in displeasure and she looks away, gazing at the darkened view screen.

 

“Now do you understand?”

 

Seth shrugs. “What am I supposed to understand, exactly? That you can show me whatever you want me to see?”

 

“Foolish child,” she sighs, and shakes her head.

 

“Okay, maybe I am foolish, but I’m not credulous,” Seth reasons. He pushes himself to sit upright. “You stuffed me in a spare room and put on a show and you expect me to believe any of it is real? It’s theater. Propaganda. You want my cooperation and you don’t want me to start throwing a fit about Kay while you’re trying to negotiate with the Avengers. Well, you’re out of luck,” he says simply. “I don’t abandon my friends that easily.”

 

“That creature is no friend of yours,” she repeats. “He came to your planet as the herald of an invasion force. It was only through the efforts of your heroes that the initial feint was turned back. As long as you have known him, longer, he has been plotting the downfall of your world. He will hand it to his wretched queen like a trophy and you will all be slaves while he is honored for his cunning and deception. Perhaps he will keep you as a pet if you continue to be such a loyal pawn,” she suggests.

 

Seth draws his knees up and uses his hands to help move his twisted feet over the edge of the bed so he can face her directly. “It’s a great story,” he says calmly. “You could probably sell it into syndication. But that doesn’t make it true.”

 

Anahl glances at the view screen. “Are you demanding further proof?” she asks, her tone incredulous.

 

Seth merely shrugs. “Wouldn’t you?” He gestures at the same screen. “At our level of technology our experts could create footage just like that. You’re obviously far more advanced than we are so who knows what kind of tech you have? You show me Kay as an alien, maybe because it hides flaws in your graphics model, and once you’ve got that model and a voice sample you can make him do or say literally anything you want. You could have him do a vaudeville tap routine in a French maid’s outfit,” he says with a flippant wave of his hand. “How could I know the difference? So just because it looks real doesn’t mean it is.”

 

Her eyes narrow. “You are a stubborn primitive.”

 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Annoying, isn’t it?” Her glare sharpens, but he is unmoved. “Of course, there’s a way around my stubbornness. Simple, direct… let me see him.”

 

“Do you honestly expect me to allow that?” she wonders, and Seth smiles.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Actually, I do. ‘Cause if you’re telling the truth you have nothing to lose. You have plenty of guards for both of us. I can’t even walk on my own, let alone run. I assume there’s nothing keeping you from strapping Kay down like you showed on that production. And if he really is a creepy green bat-eared alien from some kind of evil intergalactic empire… wouldn’t you want me to see that? Which is how I know you’re lying,” he says with a casual shrug. “Because if any of this story you’re spinning me was true, you wouldn’t be showing me pictures on a screen, you’d be parading it in front of my face.”

 

“You are trying to manipulate me,” she accuses.

 

Seth lets his expression twist in anger. “No,” he growls, stabbing a finger at her, “ _You’re_ trying to manipulate _me_. Don’t cry like a little bitch just because I’m not buying it.” With that, he twists his body and flops down, turning his back to her and curling his shoulders in what he hopes resembles a display of childish petulance. “Fuck you and your bullshit,” he mutters just loud enough for her to hear.

 

He can almost feel the irritation roll off her. He waits. He hears her clothing rustle as she shifts her weight.

 

“You will see in time,” she promises him softly. Then her retreating footsteps mark her exit, and the door shuts behind her.

 

Seth glances over his shoulder to make sure she's really gone and sighs, rubbing his palms across his face to massage away the tension headache that has begun to build between his eyebrows. Not the outcome he’d been hoping for, but he can’t count it as a loss. Not yet. He’s drawn the line and left it to her to decide when and how to cross it.

 

The headache refuses to abate. There is a panel next to the bed that Seth discovered controls the lights. He touches it and the room goes mercifully dark. He feels guilty stealing sleep while Kay is suffering but he needs to be rested and he needs to be able to focus.

 

_I’m coming for you,_ he promises silently as he curls up on the surprisingly comfortable mattress. _Don’t give up faith. I’m coming._

 

x-x-x

 

Keirx has to give the Kree this much: their interrogators know their art.

 

His internal clock marks the hours and if he can trust it, they're up to nine. Just nine hours of interrogation and he already feels like all his insides have been removed. Nothing hangs in their shackles but flapping skin, scraped thin to transparency, crowded with nerve shards like broken glass that flare into crystalline agony at the slightest touch. Everything else seems to have melted into sludge. Nothing responds to him, not his fingers, not his toes, not even his eyelids… he can’t remember the last time he blinked. His tongue is a thick and swollen lump of numb tissue and his jaw hangs half out of socket, throbbing from the loss of several teeth. Of course, removing pieces from a Skrull isn’t generally permanent, but forced into his base shape like this, unable to make any adjustments or replace missing parts, it hurts. Which is the point.

 

They aren’t going to let him sleep and his interrogator is too skilled to drive him into the bliss of unconsciousness. Every time he starts to drop off, the shackles administer painful shocks that lock up all his muscles and sometimes send him into convulsions. He's severely dehydrated already, and the denial of these basic needs makes him wonder just how long they mean for this to go on.

 

If this is a fast and dirty questioning, that's bad for him. They’ll break him down as quickly as possible and then dispose of him without giving him enough reprieve to even consider thinking up an escape plan.

 

Not that he expects to escape this. His time has come, and he accepts that, but if they think he's going to lie down and go quietly they have another think coming. No Skrull worth their scales would die at the hands of the Kree without bringing at least a few of the elfin bastards with them. Keirx plans to exact a heavy price for taking his life.

 

He's pretty sure he hasn’t talked yet, though. Some of the drugs they’ve started using on him cloud his mind to the point that he isn’t sure if he's sleeping or awake, but even in dreams he clings to one thought, one ultimatum – no words, no sound. He’s bitten his lower lip so hard it's raw meat now. When a walrus in a top hat offers him tea and oysters he sits down on a brilliantly colored toadstool, clamps his mouth shut and sings the catchiest Terran pop songs he can remember in his mind. Even if they manage to get a few words out of him, he hopes they'll be mangled beyond usefulness by random bits of Ke$ha.

 

_Let them try to decipher that drivel,_ he thinks viciously. He assumes he’s had some success, as once he swam back to consciousness from a drugged haze and found himself brokenly humming a few bars of Single Ladies.

 

His interrogator is too hard to read. If she's getting frustrated, she doesn’t show it. If she's angry, satisfied, triumphant, she doesn’t show it. He has no idea what she’s gotten out of him and that, more than all the torture, frightens him. He doesn’t have any recent intelligence on his homeland, which is a relief, but he doesn’t want to turn the Terran secrets he’s learned during his twenty years on Earth over to the Kree. The poor, stupid humans don’t deserve that fate.

 

Her face hovers into clarity in front of him. “Name,” she says to him diffidently. “Rank.”

 

_I have no vocal chords,_ Keirx tells himself, offering her a bloody, tearstained smile. _I couldn’t talk even if I wanted to. Nothing but air whistling across a gaping dark hole… nothing here for you._

 

Electricity courses through him. He throws up. It isn’t the first time, and there's nothing left to expel but a thin stream of bile.

 

“Name,” she says. “Rank.”

 

He wishes with all his might: _let the Avengers come. Let them find you. Let them force-feed you your intestines._

 

“Name. Rank.”

 

His world explodes in pain.

 

x-x-x

 

“Let’s just go up there!”

 

Steve Rogers, Captain America, hero out of time and parent to a missing child, takes a calming breath. “Tony…”

 

“No, what I’m saying is, I’ve got the suits. I can build the suits. I cracked the whole icing thing, vacuum propulsion, life support, I can do it, you’ve just got to give me the time.” Tony's gesticulating even more than usual and Steve has to fight not to lose his patience with him because he knows Tony is only pushing this because he loves his son. Sitting on his ass while a shipful of fae-looking aliens from god-knows-where try to use Seth as a bargaining chip is driving Tony crazy just like it's driving Steve crazy, but flying up there in Tony’s suits and punching their ship until it breaks apart isn’t the answer.

 

“Do you want Rhodey?” Tony asks, flipping a pen between his agile fingers. “I’ll get Rhodey. He’d do it for me. Well, maybe mostly for you.”

 

“These people have been at war with the Chitauri,” Natasha points out in her usual dry tones. “There’s no telling what their technology’s like. Even if we engage them directly there’s no guarantee that anything we have would make a dent in them.”

 

“What? Excuse me, hello,” Tony says, spreading his hands plaintively. “Maybe you’ve forgotten that the Chitauri came here with all their tech and got pretty dented. I’m just saying….”

 

“ _We’re_ just saying a direct assault probably isn’t the best tactic,” Clint interrupts him. He has his arms folded across his chest-piece, and when Tony shoots him a betrayed look, he shrugs. “They’ll be expecting it.”

 

“And all they have to do is hold a knife to my son’s neck and that plan would go out the window pretty fast,” Steve adds. Though he speaks very quietly, everyone shuts up when he opens his mouth. Since the Kree delivered their ultimatum, they all treat him like a bomb about to go off except Natasha, who offered him a moment of quiet support and the pressure of her hand on his shoulder. They seem convinced he's going to do something stupid and the way Steve feels right now, they might be right. “They’ve got the bargaining power.”

 

“Well you know what? Screw them AND screw their bargaining power,” Tony says, brash as always. “I’ll take the front. You and Tasha go in the back. We get Bruce out there running interference… can you even die in a vacuum?” he diverges suddenly, swinging around to address the question to Bruce, who just smiles in his self-contained way.

 

“I’ve never tested that and I’m not particularly eager to.”

 

Tony rolls his eyes like he thinks Bruce is just being recalcitrant. “Really though, how are they going to fight the Hulk? They’re on a giant tin can in space. They’ve got more to lose than we do. I’m telling you, we’ll get in there, we’ll snatch the kids, and we’ll get out. And while we’re doing it we’ll send a message,” he adds, punctuating his words with agitated thrusts of the pen. “Don’t fuck with us.” He hesitates, then reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a hundred dollar bill.

 

Tasha is already holding out the swear jar, and she rattles it coyly at him until he’s stuffed the money through the slot. Underneath the label, Pepper’s neat script reads: _all proceeds to charity._

 

“You know, I’m not totally clear on the whole Other Guy In A Vacuum thing,” Bruce says, swaying gently as he speaks, “but one thing I’m pretty sure of is that neither Seth nor Kay can survive one.”

 

Tony slumps a little. “Come on, you’ve got to back me up here,” he pleads, and Bruce looks apologetic.

 

“I just think maybe a little more… diplomacy is required in this situation,” he hedges, and earns a frustrated sigh.

 

“Okay,” Tony says. “So… I’m outvoted. Are we negotiating with terrorists now? Is that how we do things?” He's looking at Steve now, accusatory, and Steve holds up his hands, loathe to have the conversation turn into a shouting match like so many in their long history. “Because if we’re doing that,” Tony continues, “I can think of one particular terrorist who might have a vested interest in….”

 

“We are NOT bringing Loki in on this,” Steve snaps a little too forcefully. Clint and Natasha’s eyes flick to him. Bruce studiously looks out the window, but Tony just looks… combative. As usual.

 

“He led the Chitauri here. If the Kree are their enemies he might know something worth knowing. I could get it out of him. Tasha could.”

 

Natasha extends one hand, deceptively small and fine-boned. “Leave me out of this. Not out of the whole thing,” she adds when Steve glances at her. “Just… the Loki thing.”

 

“There’s no ‘Loki thing’, and this isn’t a terrorist negotiation. They might just be counting coup,” Steve proposes, though in his heart he doesn’t believe a word of it and the sick, falling sensation refuses to go away. He hears Natasha shift behind him and takes some comfort in her proximity.

 

“In a lot of cultures a kidnapping is a way of opening negotiations,” she says, continuing his line of reasoning. “You gain the other party’s respect and attention, you prove your courage. It’s not implausible.”

 

“They’re an alien society,” Clint puts in. “We know nothing about them. We can’t make assumptions on anything other than what they’ve already given us.”

 

“Well, since you two are putting forth so many scintillating ideas, maybe you can answer this question; what has Fury got? Anything?” Tony circles the island and opens the refrigerator. With four pairs of eyes on him, he selects a soda and pops the tab. “Isn’t this sort of his portfolio? Where IS he?” He leans against the wall next to Bruce, close enough for their shoulders to brush, and Bruce subtly shifts just a little bit closer.  “Aliens in the stratosphere and S.H.I.E.L.D. is leaderless? I don’t like that.”

 

“Fury is on assignment,” is all Natasha says and Tony’s expression shows how useful he thinks that stock phrase is.

 

“Then get him off assignment.”

 

“It’s not that simple.”

 

“Of course it is. I guarantee if you track the guy down and show him the satellite pictures he’ll haul his leather-clad ass right back here.”

 

Tasha shakes the swear jar and Tony digs out a random bill and tosses it in the air in her general direction, letting his carelessness express his disdain. Predictably, she snatches it in mid-flutter with two fingers and tucks it neatly through the slot.

 

Tony doesn’t pause. “At the LEAST, we could call Thor. That’s okay, right? Technically the guy is on our team.”

 

Bruce's shoulders hitch.  “He has responsibilities in Asgaard….”

 

“He has a nephew HERE who needs him. The big guy’s all about family, you know he’d show up.”

 

“And bring Loki with him?”  At this, Tony throws his hands up.

 

“Cap, I get it, you don’t like the guy. I don’t like him either. But this arena we’re stepping into, this intergalactic conflict, he’s actually got some experience there plus he’s kind of soft on the kid, so I think maybe that could make him a valuable resource.”

 

“He isn’t ‘soft on’ Seth,” Natasha interrupts. Her voice has gone soft and arctic cold. “He manipulated him and he used him. I don’t understand why you can’t see that, or why any of you would even think reintroducing Seth to someone who has no qualms about twisting a child’s mind is remotely acceptable.” She pins Tony down with her gaze, but Tony doesn’t look away.

 

“That’s how you see it,” he allows, tapping his pen against his palm. “Seth sees it differently.”

 

“Seth is a teenager,” she reminds him, testy. “At the time he was even younger. You think a lot of things at that age that turn out not to be true.”

 

“Is that the voice of experience?” Tony’s needling now, and Steve knows he has to shut this conversation down before Stark’s unerring ability to hone in on others’ hot buttons frays the tension even further.

 

“Agent Hill has everything that we have,” he says, and is relieved when they both redirect their attention. “She’s looking for Fury and in the meantime she’s promised us any resources S.H.I.E.L.D. can offer, but they don’t have space ships.”

 

“Yet,” Tony interrupts. “They don’t have space ships yet. We’re working on it.”

 

Steve sighs. “Fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that we can’t mount a coordinated assault on the Kree vessel as far out as it is, and flying up there in individual suits just isn’t feasible when we have no intel on their defenses. And I think….” The sick feeling swells up into his throat and he has to gulp it down. “I think we should open negotiations.”

 

Natasha and Clint exchange a look, and she says, “Captain….”

 

He holds his hand up to forestall what he's certain will be a perfectly legitimate protest. “They came here to talk to us. They abducted Seth to force us to talk to them. You remember what Thor said when the Chitauri invaded… that the Tesseract was a signal to the rest of the universe that Earth is ready for a higher form of war? Well in my experience, war is never about the people actually fighting it. It’s about the people at the top and their determination to either work it out or fight it out. Last two wars I was in, we couldn’t work it out. Maybe this one, we can.”

 

Tony looks mildly impressed. “The eternal optimist.”

 

“You’re assuming they have any intention of bargaining with us fairly,” Tasha reminds him.

 

“If our enemy is their enemy….”

 

“They can annihilate us,” she counters, and Tony holds up a finger.

 

“I beg to differ,” he says, stifling a small burp from the carbonation and fluttering his fingers in apology. “The Chitauri couldn’t annihilate us so who says the Kree can do it? That’s the secret behind this whole tactic. All this, everything they’re doing, is to AVOID a direct confrontation.”

 

Steve blinks. “Wait, suddenly you think I’m right?”

 

Tony hedges. “I think… maybe there’s a slight chance that you could have an angle on something. If Romanov’s argument is that they could take us out any time it sort of begs the question of why they don’t. Clearly we must have some negotiating power or they wouldn’t be treating us like a threat. I just don’t like that they have my nephew,” he says, bluntly honest and already reaching for his wallet. “It pisses me off. It makes me want to blow them straight to hell and back which I know you sympathize with.” He reaches over to put money in the swear jar but Tasha, her expression pinched, just waves him off.

 

“Soooo…”  Bruce is hesitant, and his hip bumps ever-so-slightly against Tony’s with his idle movement.  “What are you suggesting now?”

 

Tony’s mouth works.  He braces both hands on the island and leans into the marble, flexing shoulders both stronger and more sunken from his tenure as a superhero.  Steve recognizes the look in his eyes and stifles a tingle mixed of anticipation and dread - Tony’s about to either fix everything or blow everything up.  Knowing him, it can always go either way.

 

“I say we offer to accept their surrender.”

Three half-formed protests take shape in the air and Steve just lets his eyes close as the tingle in his belly turns cold.  Even as the objections drop he knows, they all know, this is their road.

  
_Yeah,_ he thinks ruefully.   _That’ll blow it up all right._


	3. In Which Seth Watches 'Teen Titans Go'

Anahl comes for him a scant handful of hours later, after he's woken from his nap but before the drowsiness has faded.  He securely hid his tools before settling down, but the two bulky Kree males she brings with her don't bother to search him or search the area around his bed before hauling him unceremoniously off the mattress.  Seth feigns sleep-confusion, crying out and swatting impotently at the aliens until they pin him down.  His arms are twisted, and he finds his chest forced into an awkward expansion that leaves his breathing dangerously thin.

 

"Desist at once," Anahl orders him, and Seth lets a tick go by before blinking and relaxing into the guards' rough grip.  

 

"Anahl," he mumbles, trying to rub his face against his shoulder.  "What time is it?"

 

At her nod, the guards loosen their grip and haul him to his feet.  He makes a show of trying and failing to prop them under himself, forcing them to take most of his weight.  They do so without the slightest ripple of effort.  He might feel intimidated by that if he allowed himself the luxury.

 

"It's time to contact your father," she says.  "Behave yourself and do as you're told, and you won't be harmed."

 

"Kind of an empty threat."  Seth is still panting, drooping from the hands of his captors.  "If you hurt me, there's no chance they'll negotiate with you."

 

"Not all hurts must leave a visible sign," Anahl reminds him coldly, and he sees by the set of her jaw that he'd be unwise to test her on this.

 

They march him through the gently-lit halls and graceful corridors.  He catches glimpses of familiar stars through ovoid portals, but earth isn't there, and he wonders if they went so far as to orient the ship to prevent him from catching even a glimpse of home.  "Where's Kay?" he asks as the Kree carry him over the gleaming smart-floors that lighten and dim with their passage.  Anahl doesn't answer, but Seth is unwilling to let it go.  "Anahl," he prods.  "Where's Kay?  I want to see him."

 

"If you're thinking of bargaining your cooperation, don't," she replies.  She pauses before an arched set of doors crowned by a green gem-like lense.  It scans Anahl and the doors cycle open, revealing a simple room with a curved couch, contoured windows displaying the stars, and a hovering oblong robot with a large red lense on the front that Seth assumes is there to record his message.

 

"Do I get to speak to my father?"  Anahl's grunts carry him to the couch and sit him down, pulling and tugging at his limbs to make sure he's sitting upright, then roughly pushing his hair back from his face.

 

"Silence, until you're told to speak."  Anahl adjusts settings on the camera-bot, which doesn't make cute noises or flutter up and down like it would have if it had been invented by Tony Stark.  Devoid of personality, it fixes Seth with its blank stare while she tinkers and twists.

 

"This doesn't have to be difficult," Seth persists.  "I want to see Kay.  Just let me see him and I'll cooperate with anything you want."

 

"You'll cooperate regardless," Anahl informs him, and nods to one of the guards, who approaches Seth and produces a long, flexible instrument with a rounded, semi-transparent tip.

 

Seth gawks despite himself.  "Is that a probe?"  He tries to hitch himself along the couch but the other guard's hands clamp over his thin shoulders and hold him in place.  "It is, it's a PROBE--!"

 

He feels it even before it touches him, in the split second it takes to cross the last few inches.  He feels his skin prickle, his nerves tingle, and a tightness in his groin that threatens bladder control.

 

"No," he gasps, "Nonononono!"

 

Then the tip presses against his ribs through his shirt and he screams.  His bladder makes good on its threat and lets go, flooding him with acrid warmth, and he doesn't notice because every ounce of his attention is fixed upon the teasing caress of that instrument.  It isn't sharp.  It isn't electric.  There's no visible way it should be hurting him, and yet his body is convinced that he's been stabbed by an ice pick that's twisted deeper with every passing instant.  Seth is no stranger to agony thanks to his disability, which has twisted his pelvis and his spine in ways that regularly leave him crying for mercy, counting the eternal seconds until his painkillers can kick in.  But that pain is deep, bruising, radiating along his misshapen spine.  It moves in slow waves that allow him to steal breaths between spasms of paralysis in his lungs.  This pain is fireworks behind his eyes.  It's flaying, flensing, a wordless scream that rips free of his throat and turns into a shamefully plaintive shriek.  Seth is certain it will kill him, in that instant - it should be impossible to suffer so much and not die.

 

When his mind returns from the depths of sucking semi-conciousness, he realizes the agony has ended.  It still hurts like the ache of overused muscles where the instrument touched him, the product of involuntary muscle spasms.  His body doesn't trust this momentary reprieve - he's still twitching, gasping softly as his muscles test themselves to make sure he wasn't really torn open and gaping just under the ribcage.  No blood, no exposed organs, no torn skin... just the lingering echoes of them.

 

Seth hears himself wheezing and realizes he wasn't given the opportunity to grab his inhaler.  From the numbness in his chest, he knows this is going to be a bad one.  He reaches for the nearest Kree and the guard makes a noise of disgust, backing away from him.  Seth continues to grope as his chest tightens and his lungs close and spits the words through dry lips.  "M-d-cne," he gulps.  "C-nt brthe... plzz...."

 

Anahl says something to her escorts.  He can hear the disdain in her tone.  One of the guards replies and his voice echoes oddly in Seth's ears - everything is drowned out by rushing noise as his eardrums throb and his heart trips over itself.  It's like being submerged in deep water complete with drowning, but Seth is certain that actual drowning is far more peaceful than this.  'I should ask Namor', he thinks, and marvels at the mind's ability to focus on insignificant minutia when death is coming.  'Knowing him, he'd be offended by the question'.  He's been to Namor's realm once, on a diplomatic trip with his father.  Namor had been smug when Seth was able to navigate much more easily under the water, and had used his obvious glee as evidence of the superiority of his kingdom.  'Should have fostered there like he wanted,' Seth thinks wildly.  'Then I wouldn't be here now....'

 

Someone is forcing his head back and pushing something between his teeth.  They press his hand over it, and he struggles until he recognizes the taste of albuterol sulfate.  Then years of practice kick in.  He is sinking, failing to tread water, but he doesn't need to be capable of thought to give his inhaler a firm shake and shove it back between his teeth.  The first drag is choked off before he can get the medicine to his lungs.  He exhales as hard as he can, and goes blind.

 

The second drag gets past the tightness in his throat.  His lungs scream through the shattered colors behind his eyes as he forces himself to hold, hold, until he can't take it anymore and the air spills out of him in a wheezing rush.  Then again, slowly, slowly, as the muscles relax and the tubes inflate, and he can feel the coolness that comes with fresh air.  His vision comes back with the ability to breathe, but his eyes are so full of tears that all he can do is lay on the floor gasping with his forehead against the thin carpet.

 

Someone digs the toe of a boot into his hip.  Seth doesn't react, can't react - his own breathing is infinitely more important to him right now.

 

"Disgusting."  Anahl's voice.  Anahl's boot.  "How much more of that could you take, I wonder?"

 

Seth coughs.  "Depends."  His voice comes out in a rasp and clogs in his throat.  "How pissed do you want the Avengers to be when they get here?"

 

"Your species is ridiculous."  She steps back and says something in her own language.  Seth catches her gestures from the corner of his eye, but can't interpet them until the guards, both grimacing, reach down and haul him to his knees.  "Any race with an ounce of common sense  would have smothered you in the cradle.  It would have been the humane thing."

 

"Pretty sure a lot of my species would agree with you," Seth mumbles, rubbing the backs of his knuckles across his face.  "Fortunately my family's not a bunch of eugenicist assholes.  Keep hitting me if you want."  His view of Anahl is half-blocked by his hair, but he can see the tight look on her face, the disdain.  "However much you hurt me, they're going to take twice that out of your hide."

 

"Don't be so dramatic.  You'll recover.  The nerve inducer doesn't leave marks."  She drags the long, flexible rod across her palm, caressing it fondly, and Seth snorts.

 

"What do you think this is, family court?  It doesn't matter if you leave marks.  What matters is what I tell them about how you treated me.  So go ahead."  Her eyes widen at his dare.  "Hurt me.  Over and over and over.  I'll smile while your mission goes down the drain.  The Hulk is my uncle, you pitiless bitch.  How angry do you think it'll make him when he finds out what you did to me?"  He gives that a moment to sink in, then says, "I want to see Kay now."

 

"You will look into the red circle."  Anahl knees in fromt of him.  The acrid scent of his urine makes her upper lip curl.  "You will say what I instruct you to say; no more, no less.  You will smile and assure your family that you are well and are being treated fairly.  If you resist, you will be punished.  Then we will try again.  We will try as many times as it takes to obtain your cooperation.  Do you understand me?"  The probe whips out too fast for Seth to see and touches the underside of his chin.  He flinches, but it's not activated.  "Answer."

 

Over the years, supervillains had learned not to threaten Captain America.  Obstinacy runs strong in the Rogers line.  A threat, to them, is a challenge, and they have yet to meet a challenge they can't conquer with a good, focused beat-down.  Anahl clearly hasn't learned this lesson; if she had, she wouldn't have been at all surprised by Seth's reply.

 

"Waffles."

 

[It's juvenile.  It's unoriginal.  It's petty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gj95m0CR5I).  But Seth can't bring himself to care when Anahl's grip tightens on the nerve inducer and her jewel-like eyes cloud with confusion.

 

"Answer yes or no," she says, and Seth responds knowing he and the inducer are about to become very intimately acquainted.

 

"Waffles."

 

She lets out a tight little huff of air.  "What does that mean?"  She looks to her guards as if they may have better comprehension of the nuances of the English language than she does, and Seth can't see their faces, but he gets his knees under him in preparation for the coup de grace.  "Answer properly or I'll apply punishment."

 

Seth can't sing on the best of days.  He loves music but where his own voice is concerned he's a little tone deaf.  Still, he hopes she's recording this, because some day he'd like to look back on it and laugh.

 

"Waffles, waffles, waffles," he sings, bobbing in his captors' arms.  "Waffles waffles waffffflllllles.  Waffles waffles waaaaafffllllless, waffles waffles...."  His soaked jeans drag against his thighs as he clumsily sways his hips.  His spine punishes him for the movement before Anahl can get around to it, and as she stands, he hears her utter an oath in the Kree language.  While he doesn't understand the words, the are you fucking kidding me rings clear through her tone.

 

Then the probe comes down.  This time it's turned on.

 

***

 

Three hours later, Seth is being moved from the emergency medical bay back to his quarters after a brief incident of heart failure.  Anahl has not seen him since the EMTs carried him out on a stretcher - she doesn't trust herself not to throttle him with her own hands and finish the job.

 

His last word before he dropped was 'waffles'.

 

She still doesn't have her hostage video.

 

And some program called 'Jarvis' is hailing the comm.  She isn't familiar with the name, but the signal is coming from Avengers Tower, which means her time has run out.  If she can't show them the brat, they're going to want to know why, and there's no lie she could come up with that they're likely to believe short of 'he gave me lip and I tossed him out the airlock', which wouldn't help matters.

 

The bridge doors open and her comm officer turns to greet her with his fingers on his earpiece.  "You can't stall them?" she demands, but he stops her.

 

"It's not a channel, it's a message.  Pre-recorded.  I've been converting the video and audio into something compatible with our systems."

 

"Let's see it, then."  She stands, regal, and awaits Earth's answer.

 

Steve Rogers, it turns out, looks a lot like his son.  They have the same fine golden hair, the same concerned tilt to their eyebrows, the same strong jaw.  His eyes are a watery blue where Seth's are a dull, mud brown.  Anahl isn't certain of her ability to read the eyes of humans - they all have such weak gazes, as if they're apologizing for making eye contact.  The authority of the Kree is not in them.  Perhaps, she thinks, they know what worthless creatures they are deep in the core, but evolution drives them to ignore that knowledge and posture above their station.  They are pitiable, not dangerous, and she still doesn't understand why her people don't just sieze the system and the warp fold it contains.

 

" _This is Captain Rogers,_ " the video projection intones.  " _On behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the United World Government, I am hereby authorized to accept your total and complete surrender, including an immediate cessation of all hostilities and the return of all hostages, military and civilian...._ "

 

"Is he serious?" she wonders aloud, and her comm officer offers no reply.

 

_"... extend immunity from prosecution from past crimes in order to facilitate a peaceful, equitible diplomatic solution.  We extend an invitation to you to come to earth in peace, as potential allies, and offer you the opportunity to meet with representatives of various governments and security organizations to discuss the terms of a peace treaty between both our peoples.  If you aren't authorized to negotiate such a treaty we request that all hostages be returned until such time as an authorized negotiator arrives to begin peace talks.  You have one planetary rotation or twenty-four local hours to respond."_  At this, Captain Rogers pauses and peers earnestly into the camera.  " _There's no reason for us to be enemies.  Earth is prepared to be open-minded.  We hope you're prepared to do the same."_

 

The video goes black.  The comm officer flashes her a grim look.  "That's all there is."

 

"I gathered that."  She only barely prevents herself from snapping.  These humans... insolent.  Impossible.  Wretched.  But those watery little eyes conceal an unexpected amount of courage.  Anahl sinks into her seat and considers.  She won't be surrendering to the Avengers of course.  The very idea is absurd.  Nor will she be giving up her hostage.  The Avengers are letting her know they won't be cowed just because she has one of their children.  Clearly, stronger tactics are required.

 

She rises without a word and leaves the bridge.  Two levels down, the gentle curve of the hallway fades away to reveal the entrance to Interrogation 1.  The door opens at the touch of her hand.  All is quiet inside; Sarinel isn't working at the moment and the Skrull subject has passed out in his restraints.  The sight of him repulses her, but at least he's only one - skrulls tend to move in hordes and create infestations, like insects, in an unending wave radiating out from their home world.  Once they've moved into a place, it's nearly impossible to stamp out all of them.  Having one on her ship makes Anahl's skin crawl.  But if he's here, she thinks, at least he can be useful.

 

She crosses the shadowed room and reaches out to grip the creature's chin.  A rough shake wakes him, and he fixes oversized green eyes on her.  According to the interrogation logs his heart hasn't given out, but like Seth he looks like he's found the limit of his endurance.  When he manages to focus on her, she smiles.

 

"You're unwilling to betray your queen," she murmurs soothingly.  "I know.  I understand.  I don't want anything from her."  Then her grip tightens like a vise.  Bone grates on bone under her fingers and he gives a gratifying whimper.  

 

"I want everything you have on the Avengers."


End file.
